Cerise
by Klioud
Summary: OG. Ignoring the Compilation. Post-Epilogue. Written for Clerith Month - Day 9: "This is where we first met." Cloud visits what is left of Sector Eight.


It only takes four days for a name to take root: the people call the event Meteorfall. It is a weird name. Cloud thinks it is also apt. Meteor had fallen. It just never made it to the ground.

Cloud remembers how the Highwind saw them all mostly intact to Kalm. Although the Lifestream had receded by the time they arrived there, the people had not. People of all ages filled the streets with their bodies and voices. They shouted and danced about. Laughed at the sky and sobbed into each others' necks. Children knocked their elbows against each other as they scampered by. Even though it had only been about eleven in the morning, some people had cracked open whatever alcohol they had to hand. Cloud and his friends were invited by flushing strangers to take sips from flasks and chipped coffee mugs. Cid was the only one among them who stopped to take a swig. Grinning, Cid had tried to pass a flask to Barret. But Barret would not slow down for anything then. He led them through the thick crowd to the three-floor apartment building that housed Marlene and Elmyra.

Barret called through and knocked on the door to their little apartment. Marlene had answered it with wide eyes and an even wider smile. After letting them all into the apartment, Marlene hugged Tifa's knee with one arm and Barret's shin with the other. It made Cloud smile. They all just barely fit into that tiny living room. So Cloud had stepped into the adjoining kitchen to free up some space.

He found Elmyra sitting at the kitchen table across from Reeve. A half-full wineglass was in her hand. The open red wine bottle on the table between them had apparently been Reeve's idea. Except that his own glass looked untouched. At first, he suspected that Reeve had been too nervous about meeting them all in-person to risk even a sip. Cloud remembered being the same way himself on the first night following his induction into a Shinra infantry unit.

But then he saw Elmyra's drooping eyebrows. He understood right away why Reeve's glass was still full.

Elmyra had held her wineglass by its stem. It reminded him immediately of how his mother used to hold hers. That memory came to him with startling clarity. Then Reeve said something like, _You were expecting me to be just a bigger cat, weren't you?_ Cloud remembers hearing his own two-note laugh echo in that tiny kitchen. At the same time, he heard Barret in the other room demanding that Vincent meet his daughter. It felt like all the air in the kitchen had escaped into the living room.

Reeve resembled his creations: lanky with too-thin limbs. A smile like a crack in ceramic. Unlike his creations, he seemed far less talkative. He had offered no more words after that joke. Just nodded his head and took his glass with him into the too-full living room.

Cloud remembers Elmyra taking a sip from her glass before speaking.

 _Mr. Tuesti told me._

Elmyra shook her wineglass slightly. There had been nothing elegant about the motion. Her arm had been too close to her chest. Her gaze had to drop too low to watch the wine slosh about.

Cloud had not known what to say to her. Only that he knew he had to say something. Another memory had surfaced right then. It was imperfect and murky. All Cloud could remember was that Elmyra had once asked him to leave her house without _her_ knowing.

 _She gave us hope,_ he said without thinking. His own words startled him. _Sorry, I—_

The sound of her setting down the wineglass had been enough to stop him mid-sentence.

 _She gave me hope too,_ Elmyra said quietly.

It has been three days since then. Now Cloud walks through Midgar and tries not think about how Elmyra's mouth stretched sideways in an effort to smile. He and the others have come here to pitch in the search-and-rescue operations. Not everyone had made it out of Midgar during the evacuation.

Surprisingly, most of the people they find are uninjured. There have only been an unlucky few trapped under or inside collapsed structures. They usually just find people hunched over themselves in the alleyways. A lot of them are shell-shocked. For them, Meteor has not stopped falling yet.

Cloud can kind of understand that. Sometimes, he can still see it falling when he closes his eyes. But he can also see her hands cupped around Meteor as it burns itself and all its anger out into nothing.

Then there are the survivors they find in the middle of frolicking. They are sound in mind. Mostly. Probably. He cannot fault them for having their minds blown by how drastically Midgar has changed.

Midgar is _green._

Everything metal has gone red from rust far beyond their years. The roads are little more than asphalt patches in a sea of wild grass. All the buildings and billboards are just giant trellises at this point.

It is hard to reconcile this Midgar with what he remembers it being like. Cloud can look back now and see that Midgar had been made out of the smog of its people's anxieties. The pizza had been that smog solidified. But most of the upper plate is now gone. Just like Meteor, it burned itself and all its misery out with it.

Now Midgar is filled with daylight.

He is no scientist, but Cloud has his own theory as to how Midgar turned out like this. The Lifestream had concentrated itself here to stop Meteor. It called on all the Mako energy that Midgar sat on top of too. It only made sense that all that congregated energy would revitalize this lifeless earth.

Cloud believes that she had a hand in this outcome too. No one they come across appears to be suffering from Mako poisoning. He has no way to prove it, but he thinks she must have directed the energy back into the earth to prevent exposure.

Eventually, their search-and-rescue party ends up in what is left of Sector Eight. Cloud only knows where they are because that giant poster for _LOVELESS_ is more or less intact. The avenue is otherwise unrecognizable: the carcasses of cars wear green funeral shrouds. Every window in every building along this street has been shattered. The window frames and sills are laced with vines and newborn flowers. His nose picks up the slight smell of mold. His eye catches on the opalescent sheen of too much iron in a nearby water puddle.

It is astounding that the sign is relatively unchanged.

Cloud stares at it. Cid had mentioned _LOVELESS_ before. Something about only being awake for its final scene. It takes him a moment to remember how Cid's smile had shortened. How he begun to squint his eyes. Someone in the play had to go somewhere. They had made some kind of promise. Then a few of the words come to Cloud with startling clarity. _I'll come back to you,_ Cid had recited. _Even if you don't promise to wait._

That same character had said something else after that. Only Cloud cannot remember what. It really was not that long ago that Cid told them all about this. Even still, the memory already feels years old.

Dropping his gaze, Cloud finds himself looking at some cerise flowers budding on the hood of a nearby car. The colour flattens his lungs for half a second. Somewhere a wineglass is being set down.

 _I'll return knowing that you'll be here,_ he hears. But it is not Cid who says it.

This is the place where they first met. Cloud cannot help but think of his life as a two-headed muscle: one tendon of origin attaches to Nibelheim. The other to her church. Except that he had only been reunited with her in that place. It was on this street that he first saw and spoke with her.

He himself is the tendon of insertion. As Cloud stands there, he feels that metaphorical muscle contract. It brings all his memories so much closer to him. The air smells faintly of car exhaust and sweat. He gets the sense that things are moving just beyond his peripheral vision. There is a slight echo in his ear that sounds like an explosion.

Then the muscle lengthens. Cloud slips out of that memory and into what is left of Midgar. Sector Eight looks nothing like it had when they first met. But he knows in his heart that this is the place. The product of her prayer is all around him.

Aerith's presence is in everything: in every blade of grass. Every cordon of every vine. In all the roots of the few saplings sprouted in the earth. Aerith is in every flower bud on the hood of that car right in front of him.

He feels like he is meeting her again.


End file.
